After watching the
American Experience on Henry Ford, you see what he was about.

Control.

He controlled his company, his workers and his “everyman” image as much as he could.

Like many other controllers — and inventors — Ford changed the world.

Director Sarah Colt shows in tonight’s two-hour documentary for PBS how Ford — born in 1863 as
the oldest son of a farmer in rural Michigan — was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. He
disliked farming immensely, and his parents let him go to Detroit to pursue his engineering
talents.

Ford became obsessed with building automobiles, then a rich man’s toy. He wanted to make them
for everyone.

In 1896, he built a gas-powered car, called a “quadicycle.” It intrigued many people, but
problems with investors forced him to close his first company.

In 1903, he incorporated the Ford Motor Co., and, in 1908, he introduced the Model T.

Ford was quoted as saying buyers could have the Model T in any color as long as it was black.
Colt’s documentary points out that the first Model T was green. The initial price was $850,
considerably less than what other automakers charged, and it was “remarkably durable” — which was
good considering the condition of roads at the time.

Consumers gobbled up the cars. Suddenly, everyone could travel, and travel they did.

Ford implemented the concept of a production line, where a worker did the same job on each car,
which then moved to the next worker and the next.

“Under the old stationary system, the record time for assembling a car had been 12 hours 13
minutes. Using the assembly-line process, it took one hour and 33 minutes,” said Bob Casey, curator
of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

Workers quit in droves. Ford countered this in 1914 by giving everyone a raise from $2.34 a day
to $5 and an eight-hour workday.

He built a huge factory in River Rouge, Mich., that operated around the clock and employed
75,000 men. “Its sole function was to have thousands of men working to churn out as efficiently as
possible as many automobiles as they could,” historian Steven Watts said.

Yet Ford had a darker side. He invaded his workers’ privacy and home lives. He held anti-Semitic
beliefs. He disparaged his only son, Edsel, to the point that, when Edsel developed terminal
stomach cancer, he didn’t tell his father, because he knew he wouldn’t gain any sympathy.

As the century progressed, the Roaring ’20s made him uneasy; the Depression brought layoffs;
and, during World War II, unions arrived — which Ford hated “with a passion,” historian Greg
Grandlin said.

Edsel, who had championed the Model A, also established the company’s contract with the
unions.He died in 1943 at 49.